Portrait of the week

Mr Michael Howard remained the only candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party after a vote the week before of 90 to 75 against a motion of confidence in Mr Iain Duncan Smith, who later likened the event to a ‘near-death experience’. Talks between the Communication Workers Union and the Post Office ended unofficial strikes by postmen that had brought mail in London and elsewhere to a standstill. Firemen went on unofficial strike over pay rises. Mr James Murdoch was appointed chief executive of BSkyB; he is the 30-year-old son of Mr Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the company. The House of Bishops of the Church of England Synod issued a document called Some Issues in Human Sexuality, the publication of which had been delayed for months; it declared that it did not intend to change the directives of an earlier report from 1991 which said that homosexual people in long-term relationships should not be excluded from Holy Communion, but that homosexual clergy should be celibate. Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a speech in which he said: ‘Europe’s rigidities, inflexibilities and lack of competitiveness are now fully exposed.’ Superintendent Ali Dizaei returned to work for the Metropolitan Police, on secondment to the Black Police Association, when disciplinary charges against him were dropped and he agreed that his behaviour ‘fell far below’ that expected of an officer; he had been cleared of dishonesty at the Old Bailey after a Scotland Yard investigation costing £3 million. The Singapore High Commissioner telephoned No. 10 Downing Street for help at 2 a.m. when Mrs Kwa Geok Choo, the wife of Mr Lee Kwan Yew, was told by the London Hospital that she’d have to wait until 8 a.m. for a brain scan after she had suffered a stroke; she was then seen by 3.30